Update to "Judgement at Nuremberg"

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2071241,00.html

Read this yesterday and again the same feelings of injustice crept into my mind. Here was a man who was captured by the Germans from the Red Army and sent to be a guard. He did his duties as a guard which included being the guard of a concentration camp.

The prosecution followed the line of "he could have deserted when he knew the extent of the entire inhuman crime that was going on inside the camp."

Now at no point of time am I condoning the excesses of Nazis. But does a guard have to be tried as a criminal? Would he not prefer to be a guard rather than deserting and being caught and sent to the same camps because of deserting? Would be not prefer to be a guard rather than be a prisoner of war?

As I type these words, I wonder what would I have done in case I was the one in his shoes? I do not know! I cannot state with the utmost certainty that I would have run away and put my life in danger. But what I would have done in case I was a guard was to have turned approver the minute I knew the danger to my life was over. Now does that make me a two faced coward?

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